Keep the Lights On, which has been receiving critical acclaim since its Sundance debut early this year, is the story of the fractious relationship between Erik, a Danish documentarian living in New York, and Paul, a closeted lawyer with drug and sexual-addiction issues.
The film, which director Ira Sachs co-wrote with Mauricio Zacharias, is based on Sachs' one-time liaison with literary agent Bill Clegg (who has written his own memoir about his struggles with addiction). The film, with its sexually provocative and emotionally searing moments between the couple, doesn't pull any punches as it tracks the rocky trajectory of Erik and Paul's journey against the backdrop of a pulsating Manhattan (which becomes a third character).
At turns, the movie is raunchy, emotionally raw and, at times, almost embarrassingly intimate. Sachs was recently in town for the film's premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival and to help celebrate the new offices of Music Box Films, the movie's distributor. Keep the Lights On opens this Friday at the Music Box Theatre.
Windy City Times: The evolution of this script is particularly interesting because it utilizes elements of your life that leads one to wonder, "Where did you draw the line?"
Ira Sachs: That's a good question and I'm sure it's more complicated than my answer. [Laughs] A combination of things: 1) I saw a movie called Before I Forget, which is a French film by a gay filmmaker named—
WCT: Jacques Nolot—one of my all-time favorite movies. I saw it first here when the International screened it.
Ira Sachs: Oh, then we are speaking the same language!
WCT: I about went insane when I saw that movie.
Ira Sachs: I did, too. I was so incredibly moved by it, and a light bulb went off in my head that I had never seen a film that accurately depicted my life and my world and my behavior so openly in New York City and I thought, "Someone needs to make a film like this."
At the same time I was aware that, quite recently, I had ended a relationship, and the images of the last day of that relationship—when I was walking down the street with my partner and saying goodbye and realizing that, 10 years before, there had been a very specific first day of that relationship—made me know that I wanted to tell a story about the world that I lived in and that I had a story to tell which was my own.
WCT: One of the most telling moments to me is when Erik's best friend says that she's angry with him because he didn't tell her about Paul's addiction. Erik turns to her and says, "I've lied since I was 13." That's queer history—it's second nature to lie, to hide, to obfuscate if you're a gay man of a certain age. I'm not sure of this younger generation of queers, but that's been our experience.
Ira Sachs: I just had coffee today with a guy who is 31 and he was telling me about how his life is changing in positive ways but he kept mentioning people and saying, "I'm not sure if they know I'm gay" and "I haven't told this person yet that I'm gay" and on and on like that. I kept thinking, "Oh, things have not changed so much" because, clearly, he still feels shame about his sexuality; that burden is one that is so enormous and it's one that I really fight every day to not hold on to that anymore. I think I made Keep the Lights On as an attempt to shamelessly tell a story that is fueled by shame.
WCT: I think it's very interesting that at the beginning of the relationship it seems like Erik is the adventurous one and Paul the more conservative in public, but in private the roles seemed somewhat reversed.
Ira Sachs: I think they both have their closets and I think what's interesting is that the term "the closet" refers specifically to telling people that you're gay but I think in truth we exit one closet and as gay people, we often enter another because we're used to it—it's how we formed ourselves. I think both of them have a series of closets and ways in which they've compartmentalized their lives that make intimacy very, very difficult.
WCT: Which gets back to the idea of shame: No matter how openly you now feel about your gay sexuality, somewhere there's probably still a kernel of shame that hangs on. How can it not in such a hyper, heterosexual, masculine society like ours? It's got to seep into other areas.
Ira Sachs: Oh, yeah. I think the other side of this, though, is that the film is also driven by an enormous hunger which is desire and want. I think, in a way, that is the compulsive fuel of the film that makes it energetic.
WCT: I like that the movie is unapologetic about the importance of sex to the relationship. It reminded me, certainly of Before I Forget and a bit of Shortbus and maybe even Shame a little bit, where sex is such a huge part of everyday life.
Ira Sachs: It was very important to me that the sexual behavior not be separated out of the rest of everyday life in the film because I think that's actually what gay men try to do all the time—they try to consider sex as something they do between events and between moments that they share with other people.
That might be true of any relationship, for example. Within the context of everyday life there are these little gaps that involve sex, and I think gay people often pretend they don't exist. They literally erase them in how they tell the story of their day, for example. Does that make any sense?
WCT: It makes perfect sense, and we're going back to that idea of self-editing when you talk to people when in your head. You're thinking about that moment when you had sex with your partner or tricked with someone or went online to that porn site. [Laughs]
Ira Sachs: Yeah, yeah. And I think that there are costs to that erasure and I really wanted the film to be the reverse of that. As a filmmaker, now I can make a film in which everything is visible.
WCT: Now that your life has changed—you have a partner and children—is this as important to you?
Ira Sachs: Oh, yes. I have rigorously chosen to life honestly because I now know the cost of the opposite of that and the pain that was involved. The pain was more severe than the movie. [Laughs]
A movie can't really depict the long-term, quiet suffering that I think most gay people are at some level very familiar with from a very young age. [This] has to do with holding something inside and trying to control that image on the outside. For me, I think it fits perfectly well that I came out of the closet and I started going out a decade later with a very active crack addict, which became another closet. That was a big secret to keep from my friends and family.
WCT: In addition to Before I Forget, you were also inspired by The Kids Are Alright and Parting Glances. Now I think of those as great films but I also think of those as great gay films. And I know this is sometimes problematic when you talk to gay filmmakers—as if that is ghettoizing the work.
Ira Sachs: I have two things to say about that: Number one, just the other day I was in the theater and there was a big audience for the film and many of them were younger people—it was at a gay film festival—and I hoped that for someone sitting in that theater they would watch Keep the Lights On and it would be for them what Parting Glances was for me. Which was images I hadn't seen before and permission to try and follow in those footsteps to tell the stories of my own experiences in a way that was real. I run a film series called "Queer Art Film" and I'm interested in the history of certain representations and what permission it conveys and we have to have those traditions to understand what is possible.
On the other hand, I made a film called Forty Shades of Blue, about a Russian woman living in Memphis, and no one asked me what it was like to be a Russian female film director. As a filmmaker, I am a storyteller that's able to embody a wide variety of characters. I don't think I'm defined by my sexuality, per se. That said, when Russian women saw Forty Shades of Blue, they liked it and maybe they liked it in a different way than anyone else.
I think, for me, what I'm happy is about is not trying to tell my story metaphorically but trying to tell it directly. That, to me, seems valuable. Sometimes I think queer cinema, for example, tries to work within the metaphoric as a way of hiding. You can almost say that, as queer filmmakers, many of us were imitating Rock Hudson—we started to tell stories where we saw ourselves in them, but not specifically.
WCT: I get that self-perpetuating but I also love, as a queer man, to be able to hold up Parting Glances as a great example and to be able to say, "This is what I learned from; this is the first time I saw a loving relationship between two gay men." I love the "gay movie" label.
Ira Sachs: Me, too.
WCT: And if some of these movies work for mainstream audiences, great—but it's ours first and foremost.
Ira Sachs: But also—let's face it—I can tell you intimately that a film about gay characters faces different economic hurdles within the industry and within distribution and within theaters than a film that isn't about gay characters. So … we can't hide from the fact that these are real issues and that to make these kinds of films has particular challenges as well as particular rewards. I feel ultimately that this film is, for many people, more meaningful because it is gay.
WCT: You mean straight audiences, too?
Ira Sachs: I do—I think it draws attention to both the similarities and the differences between people, and I think that's a very rewarding experience in a narrative artwork.
